Exploring conceptualization through the lens of spontaneous co-thought gestures produced during abstract relational reasoning.


“We are more apt to make a grasping gesture when we speak of grasping an idea than when we speak of grasping a doorknob.” Benjamin Lee Whorf 1

Do people gesture even when thinking about abstract, non-spatial relations?

What factors influence the production of analogical co-thought gestures?

Is it worth visualizing the basic structure of experimental design?


DESIGN
  • Within-subjects (2 x 2 x 3)

    • spatiality of relations
      • spatial
      • non-spatial
    • axis of relations
      • vertical
      • horizontal
    • problem difficulty
      • hard
      • easy
      • invalid
  • (Blocked by problem type and axis with difficulty pseudorandomly interleaved.)

  • Visualizations

    • The factors of an experiment are typically described without visualization, particularly when there are more than two factors. When they are visualized, it is usually as a matrix grid.
    • Alternative visual forms may more readily capture the hierarchical structure of crossed multifactorial designs.
    • Thoughts about visualizing this structure? Is it helpful?
    • Could also try a tree map with groups and subgroups.
    • Need colors and labelling.

Linear syllogisms were used to systematically vary relation type and difficulty.


METHODS

  • After the experimenter left the room, participants solved 40 linear syllogisms, blocked by trial type (n = 24).

  • Each syllogism was presented for 10 seconds.

  • Participants solved each problem by saying “yes” if true, “no” if false, and “can’t tell” if invalid.

  • Data of participants was coded for response accuracy, gesture presense, and axis of gesturing.

Waffleplots not rendering (shown as image).

Typical visualization of mean comparison results.


A limitation of barplots.


Histograms

Boxplots


Using split violin plots to visualize distributions of mean comparisons.


Order effects (chronological)


SKETCHES (temp)


  1. Whorf, B. L. (1944) The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language. Etc: A Review of General Semantics, 1(4), 197–215.

  2. e.g., Kita, S., Alibali, M. W., & Chu, M. (2017). How do gestures influence thinking and speaking? The gesture-for-conceptualization hypothesis. Psychological Review, 124(3), 245–266.

  3. Cooperrider, K., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2017). When Gesture Becomes Analogy. Topics in Cognitive Science, 9(3), 719–737.